


ghost

by lances



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bittersweet, Cuddling, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, introspective keith, this is really just them cuddling in shiro's bed and talking but whatever they're cute, tried to take a realistic look inside keith's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 14:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lances/pseuds/lances
Summary: “I don’t regret falling in love with you.” Shiro’s tone was firm, in no way meant to be reassuring; it was spoken like a made point. “I’ll never regret it, even if you do.”“You should,” Keith’s voice sounded tight even to himself, gaze tied to nothing. “War isn’t exactly the best place to recategorize your priorities.”“No, it isn’t,” Shiro agreed. “But sometimes, it’s the little things that keep you sane.”(or: keith uses every free moment from the blades to visit shiro, and sometimes it's a happy type of sad. shiro just wants him to take care of himself.)





	ghost

It felt as though he shouldn’t want it, and in his experience, that usually meant he shouldn’t.

Keith couldn’t help it though, his body settling itself against a broad back, finding comfort in the lines Shiro tried so hard to hide. There was something special about what they had, something so visceral that it would've been hard to grasp if he wasn’t the one feeling it. Swallowing, he set an open palm against Shiro’s shoulder, the rise and fall of his breathing uninterrupted; Keith had the pace memorized. He memorized it the moment they found each other.

If he had to lose him again, Keith swore to remember everything there was to remember about Shiro—he would catalog everything from the tilt of his collarbone, to the veins plaited into his legs, to the freckle on his third knuckle. Everything was valuable when he didn’t know how long he could keep it for.His palm curled against skin, and before he could control himself, Keith let his forehead fall in its place, a drawn breath tracing Shiro’s skin.

“‘eith?” The voice was saturated with sleep, deep in the way it thundered through Shiro’s back and against Keith’s forehead.

Keith slid an arm around his waist, refusing to respond with words. Instead, he pressed the crescent of his nose into the valley between Shiro’s shoulders. Sighing, Shiro shuffled, disentangling the hold to roll over and tug Keith under his arm, muscles rolling to accommodate the position, their bodies locking. The movement had Keith’s bones ache in exhaustion, but he welcomed it nonetheless.

The mission had been convoluted, in the way they all were. A set of events that were strung together by misfortune and tragedy and opportunistic decision-making that somehow salvaged the remains. At the start of this whole thing, way back when, Keith was one of the first to stress the importance of their role as heroes, he was the one who believed in this bullshit altruism when none of the others vouched for it. While it might have thrilled Allura at the time, the dread that started seeping into his gut since wasn’t something he’d taken into account, that slowly solidifying concrete.

It was easy, back then, to make those claims—that as paladins they were important, that there was no one else who _could_ and that was why they _should._

In that moment, the ventablack of a Marmora suit rested itself against the platinum white of the dormitory walls. A suit, frayed where it mattered and heavy with a responsibility he didn’t remember hating this much. It made him wonder whether his preaching as a paladin, as the _old_ red paladin, was worth thinking about anymore. Somewhere along the line, he’d stopped seeing himself as a member of this cause, and more of a tool for it.

Somewhere down the line, Keith realized he wanted to keep Shiro safe at the cost of the universe. 

If that meant abandoning their missions, whether those happened to be under the flag of Allura’s authority or Kolivan’s—under the ensign of Voltron or the Blades—he knew he would in a heartbeat. If Keith, for a moment’s breath, felt like he would lose Shiro to this war, that he would—

 _I can’t think like that;_ his eyes slid closed _._ Shiro was an obelisk when it came to this war, even if Keith was abandoned to the margins; he'd never let them lose sight of what was important: saving people, even if that came at the cost of their own lives.

That hurt in theory, and it hurt in practice.

There were very few things that scared Keith; it was never about his own life, there was no value there—but just the mere thought of someone living on because Shiro’s heartbeat was sacrificed made Keith’s blood ice over in fear. There was nothing in this world worth that. There was no one in this world as strong or compassionate or affectionate as Shiro.

Keith knew he shouldn’t think this way, and in his experience, that usually meant it was time to stop.

“You’re stiff, Keith.” Shiro hummed, pressing a cheek to the top of his head, his prosthetic warm against the base of Keith's spine, revving with energy. The pressure was not reassuring, simply a reminder of what once was, and what now is. “You’re thinking a mile a minute.”

“I’m not,” the lie came easy, not that he thought Shiro would believe him. There was something simple about it—about not admitting things outright, just letting his thoughts settle in the space between them, reassured that Shiro would pick up on the problem regardless of whether Keith said it outright or not. “Just tired. Kolivan’s working my bones to a grind.”

Shiro’s laugh had depth but no honesty. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re—” he hesitated. Keith felt his body pulled into Shiro’s bare side, that heartbeat making itself known in a loud, steady staccato against his temple, where his head rested against Shiro’s chest. He was quiet for a moment.“You’re being careful, right?”

“Sure.”

“Keith.” It wasn’t so much chastising as it was worried, caring in that same way that always made Keith’s guard sink into the soil.

“I am,” he lied again, “as much as I can be with knives thrown at me every hour on the hour.”

Shiro sighed, his thumb pressing gentle moons into Keith’s hip. “Galra aren’t the nicest enemies, no.”

Keith scoffed out a laugh. “I was talking about Kolivan, but yeah—guess that still works.”

Shiro stiffened against him, and Keith cursed the relaxed looseness of his tongue; cynical humor was, after all, only alright when Shiro did it. Otherwise, the man’s worry became a tangible being that swallowed them whole and slaughtered the atmosphere. When the small presses stopped, Keith knew that was exactly how this would pan out. “Kolivan’s doing what?”

“Chill, Shiro,” Keith hummed, pressing up into the break of Shiro’s throat, rolling his lips in an open-mouthed kiss along the skin. He fell back a few times, not too far, loud in the way he did so. “It’s training. Allura zaps lasers at you, this isn’t exactly unheard of.”

Shiro’s body was still coiled, but Keith felt his efforts bear fruit when Shiro relaxed his arm. “Yeah—I guess you’re right.”

“I am.”

“You are.”

Keith smiled against his neck, leaving a particularly loud kiss on the underside of Shiro’s jaw. Worries aside, he wanted to enjoy this. It wasn’t often that he got to see Shiro—or any of the paladins, for that matter— anymore. Kolivan’s training was rigorous and his planning more so, with missions falling in a back to back sequence where each breath he took was planned for time and wasted energy. Keith would admire how beautifully executed the whole thing tended to be, if his neck wasn’t on the line and if it didn’t drive him down to ground joints and unstitched organs.

Athletics were his forte, but exhaustion to the point of emptying his stomach after every mission was a special brand of overkill. Galra heritage, it seemed, did little to place him on par stamina-wise with full-bloods.

On the rare occasion that a mission ended and his body wasn’t a junkyard of displaced bones, Keith used the time to visit. He only had a few hours before Kolivan would call for him again, and Keith would have to pretend he’d spent that time resting rather than seeking out his old friend.

Old friend.

 _Lover_.

“Hey, Keith?”

Keith hummed, his last kiss chaste and quiet in comparison to the ones that came before it; he refused to visit if he wasn’t in good shape. Shiro didn’t need more stress than he was already shouldering—only issue was, those times were few and far between. Fighting from within the confines of a colossal Lion was very different from the footwork Blades demanded. That was how they operated: on feet, with eyes and ears and live reality. Once upon a time, that set up would’ve been ideal.

“ _Keith_.” Shiro pulled back from Keith’s affections, wanting to look down at him instead. When their eyes met, an irrational fear siphoned its way up Keith’s chest, pouring between his lungs: _he knows._ One look was all it would take and Shiro would unravel his thoughts, crack them open like an unwanted gift.

His jaw stuttered before relaxing; _no way—calm down, Kogane._ “Yeah?”

“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?”

Keith’s mouth clicked shut.

Shiro looked disappointed but said nothing. Instead, he picked up where he left off, letting his thumb—warm and thrumming with quintessence—curve itself into the indent of Keith’s hip. It hurt more than he’d like to admit. Not the movement, no; Shiro’s affection was never painful in gesture, only in reason. Keith closed his eyes and sighed, wrapping his arm just a little tighter around the orbit of Shiro’s waist.

“I’m sorry.”

That seemed to jolt him, Shiro’s other hand finding his jaw—warm in a way his other wasn’t. “No—no, there’s nothing you should be saying sorry for, alright? You’ve done nothing wrong, and don’t let Kolivan or me or anyone—even Lance—convince you otherwise.”

A laugh bubbled out of Keith, childish at every angle, breath braced against the heel of Shiro’s palm. “Lance, _really_?”

“He’s a bully sometimes, but he’s a nice guy.” Shiro laughed along with him, stroking the lines of Keith’s smile, and finally, a much needed moment of peace settled over them. It was amazing how even in his absence, Lance had the power of making those around him comfortable, at ease. He was incredible in that right, always there with the right thing said and the right thing done despite his clumsy attachment to love and acknowledgment. They’d come along way from where they’d started off, and Keith was thankful for it.

Lance was a good friend.

He didn’t have too many of those.

“I miss you.”

He didn’t realize he’d said it before it was already out in the air. Keith didn’t regret it and it didn’t startle him. In fact, the ease of it all seemed natural. He did miss Shiro, he missed him more than he’d missed anything else. He missed him when he went missing initially, and he missed him when he went missing again—

Keith blinked, a quick succession; _that was present tense, wasn’t it?_

Shiro didn’t seem to mind, using the hand on Keith’s jaw to bring his head down, brushing a kiss into his hair; Keith choked up, a gentle sound that didn’t go any further than that. He hated this—how finite whatever they had really was. One day, he was afraid he’d come back to a castle without Shiro. Or maybe it was Keith that wouldn’t come back at all. It seemed like the worst possible end to their story and the only plausible one.

He hated himself for not kissing Shiro sooner.

For not dragging him down by the collar at the Garrison, for not acknowledging what they had until they were both flung into oblivion and expected to fight in the name of a cause they didn’t know existed to begin with. There wasn’t anything poetic about it, and frankly, Keith wasn’t too fond of romance. He didn’t care for flowers or fucking in zero-g. If all he was given were moments like these, where they sat in steady, reliable silence for hours on end, Keith would thank the goddess to the nines and past.

“Shiro,” he said, a finality to the way he broke the silence. “I think—actually, no.”

Shiro hummed, questioning.

“No, fuck that—I know.” Determination stitched Keith’s brows, bridge resting against the rise of Shiro’s collarbone. “I _know_ I love you.”

Shiro stopped breathing for a moment; his next breath was strung words. “I love you, too.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“I’m in love with you, too.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith laughed, ignoring how sad it sounded. “What a shame, huh?”

Because it was. This whole thing was inconvenient in the way it interfered with every single mission Keith had to go on, in the way it fucked with him. It would’ve been easier to worry about Shiro in the same way he worried about Pidge or Hunk or even Allura—that passive, relevant but dormant tension that surfaced only when it needed to. With Shiro, Keith worried when he had to worry, and he worried when he didn’t have to worry, and he worried when he was asked and not asked and sleeping and fighting.

_So, is that what love is? Well, it sucks._

“I don’t regret falling in love with you.” Shiro’s tone was firm, in no way meant to be reassuring; he said it like he was making a point. “I’ll never regret it, even if you do.”

“You should,” Keith’s voice sounded tight to even himself, keeping his gaze tied to nothing. It would be too hard to meet Shiro’s eyes, and Keith was _all_ about the easy way out. “War isn’t exactly the best place to recategorize your priorities.”

“No, it isn’t,” Shiro agreed, leaning his head back, letting it thunk against the headboard. “But sometimes, it’s the little things that keep you sane.”

“I feel like this is driving me crazy instead,” Keith laughed without mirth, his fingers brushing unseen graffiti into Shiro’s skin, past his obliques and along his chest. “I can’t think of anything but: _I’m doing this for Shiro._ It’s always for you, it’s not fair.”

He was met with quiet.

And then, “Keith, do you know what I thought about both times I was strapped to a Galra cutting board?”

Keith wasn’t all that sure he wanted to know. Maybe it was his silence that made Shiro shift, sitting upward and letting their bodies fall apart. Keith stayed put, falling against the pillows with a gentle puff of air, allowing Shiro to tower over him.

“I thought about coming home to you,” it was one tier above a whisper, held low with affection. Keith let out a choked sound, hand finding Shiro’s arm, fingers dug into skin. It didn’t stop the other from smiling down at him, patient and tired and so, so sweet. “I thought: _I have to get out of here for Keith._ That was it—that was all there was to it. Sure, I worried about Matt and Dr. Holt, but you’ve got a special thing about you, Kogane. It’s not fair, really.”

Pulling his nails from Shiro’s skin, Keith didn’t waste a blinked moment, arms thrown up to wind around Shiro’s neck, forearms locking behind the other’s head before bringing him down. Their foreheads met before their lips, fringes brushed from the coast of their skin.

When their lips did meet, it was a dip into the esoteric. It always was, their breath a sculpted being that folded against their features, noses pressing divots to cheeks with an unapologetic sort of desperation. They didn’t kiss with passion or love or anything really. They didn't, at least Keith didn’t, think when they kissed. Instinctive was one descriptive, afraid might have been another. Filtering that thought, he pressed closer to Shiro.

His blood was rioting, Shiro’s teeth tugging at his lower lip, hips deliberate in how they canted into Keith’s own. He let his eyes tighten, soft sounds leaving the attic of his throat, bracing themselves onto the bow of Shiro’s mouth. The heat beneath his skin thickened to magma—but there was nothing sexual about it. There was nothing there between them but that need for closeness, one that found comfort in folds of clothing and smiles.

Then again, people smiled when they were miserable, too.

Keith took it still, decided that if this was all he could have of Shiro, then he would take it all. He’ll let grief burn him inside out, but he won’t let it take the universe he found in Shiro’s kiss. Waxing poetic was so _fucking_ easy when Keith had him between his thighs. In the morning, he’d scoff the metaphors away. And when he saw Shiro again, he’d let them sit patiently under his tongue waiting for a chance they’ll never get.

Shiro broke away from his lips with a wet sound, finding the apex of Keith’s throat, rolling an open kiss against the column. “ _Keith._ ”

His name sounded safe in Shiro’s mouth.

Keith panted, his nose brushing into cropped hair, eyes half mast. “Yeah?”

Shiro pulled back from his throat, grey gaze meeting his with an unreal type of depth. He held himself over Keith for a long, silent moment, before bringing two prosthetic fingers to tap them against Keith’s pulse, drumming them in time with his heartbeat.

“This—this is important to me, okay?” He swallowed, his breath stuttering. “Please take care of it.”

 _Take care of yourself._ _Value your life._ _I’m begging you._

Keith smiled.

 _You're easy to read, Takashi Shirogane_. “You can’t tell someone not to be a hero.”

Dropping his head into the crook of Keith’s neck, Shiro heaved out an exhale. “Not all heroes have to die, Keith.”

“Not practicing ones, no,” he scoffed.

“Can you not joke about this?” Shiro’s voice was sharp, killing Keith’s fight. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Okay,” he relented, quiet with more breath than voice. “I will.”

Shiro pushed up onto his forearms, resting them on either side of Keith’s head. Their proximity felt like a time bomb, wrought with tension. “Like you mean it, Keith.”

“I promise.”

Shiro looked skeptical, though the expression was a fleeting one. He leant down, dropping a long, steady kiss to Keith’s forehead, letting the silence around them hold for a beat or two longer. Just like any moment, though, that one ended too, with Shiro rolling off of him and out of bed. Keith winced at the loss of warmth but chose not to voice his discomfort, watching instead as the other walked over to the Marmora suit.

Shiro pressed the sleeve between his fingers. “You’re gonna have to go soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Keith’s mouth rolled. There was a stretch of the moment where that tightrope between them, founded on bruises and unspoken terror, threatened to snap and drop whatever solace they'd managed to find. “Yeah, I am.”

Shiro's response was both immediate and keen. “Come back to me in one piece; I don’t want your ghost.”

 _And if I already feel like one?_  

Keith cocked his head against the pillow, coiling a wry smile.“You always did hate horror.” 

Shiro’s grin was stained glass, metallic salt.

"Yeah, you could say that."

**Author's Note:**

> i love them :(


End file.
